Disclaimer One: I don't own Luna, Teen Titans, or Danny Phantom.

Disclaimer Two: If you don't want any spoilers, skip the author's note until you've finished the chapter.

Author's Note: This is indeed a Danny Phantom story, but to set up the villain, we must first understand her motivations. This story will refer to three others, none of which are required to understand, as all important plot elements will be explained in the text. These stories are "Wings of the Eagles" and "Danny's Inferno" by Legend Maker, and my other fanfiction "Time Phantom"…

This story is a prequel to Time Phantom. "Wings of the Eagles" specifically the Restless arc details Jinx previous ordeal with ghosts. And Danny's Inferno and the catastrophe of that story is the whole reason Jinx knows of Amity Park. This story, as I said, is a prequel to Time Phantom, and sets up a key item that I have not yet fully explained or used in that story. Anyway. Enough introduction. Here we go….

They were the Troika. That is how it had been for years now. It meant nothing especially sinister, and neither did it supplant what they knew to be their roots. It was simply what they called themselves. They were Jinx, Mammoth, and Gizmo.

Jinx, a pink-haired sorceress who specialized in bad-luck charms, was a middling height nineteen-year-old looking for ways to use her unique talents. Not to help anyone but herself of course.

Mammoth had the strength of 8,675,309 men, and was fairly intelligent to boot. Not that he was a genius, like the third member of the trio.

Gizmo, a diminutive braniac with a high-tech backpack and a rather immature and nasty disposition, was busy looting a rather large vault, insulting the precious stones using the words "Snot" and "Crud" alternatively as his mechanical limbs tossed the gems backwards towards his two partners in crime. Well. To one of them. Mammoth held a gargantuan bag full of diamonds they had stolen over the course of the current week. (It was now Thursday.)

Suddenly, Mammoth's mutant senses picked up something… "Hey, guys. I think I heard something." He sniffed the air. "There's someone coming."

"I'll handle it," said Jinx who had been standing around looking very bored, watching for the Troika's most likely would-be captors: The Teen Titans.

But alas, this is not a tale of Titans, but of Phantoms. And as such, it must have something to do with Amity Park and ghosts, correct? And robbing a diamond vault in Jump City, Florida would be an unlikely beginning for such a story, or one might think…

If the fourth wall had been down, these might have been the thoughts in Jinx's mind as she rounded the corner and exited the building. But as it stood, there was only one thing on her mind: defense. If the Titans were to show up—any of them—Jinx would have to warn the other two. She was so totally focused on her task, however, that she didn't even notice the woman in the nice suit hiding next to the entrance. She just hovered on by, leaving said woman quite perplexed.

Raising her hands at a noise she thought she heard, Jinx summoned a pink concentration of energy into her hands. But looking around she saw nothing. Then she turned and saw a small navy-blue cat standing near her in the glow of a light fixture hanging over head. In this, the local branch of Chaltabium Bromide Industries, the massive sky-scraping structure just south of down-town Jump City, such light fixtures where quite common. Blue cats weren't.

Nevertheless, Jinx didn't seem to be surprised. "Oh. Hey Luna," she sighed dismissively at the anime-eyed kitty. "Did you need something."

"Jinx. My crescent doesn't lie! You are one of the new Senshi that I must recruit to fight the evil Youma and protect the princess. I have all the information you need contained in this Transformation necklace. Just utter the words "Hoth Power… Ma—"

BLAURRGHH! The tiny cat screamed in pain as the light fixture that illuminated it fell, crushing it. A new bad luck charm Jinx had learned. Totally invisible, unlike the pink waves she normally threw.

Jinx sighed. "There she goes again--trying to recruit me to fight the Netherverse."

AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHLL!

It was another scream, but this time not from Luna, but from a fair distance. And it came from the direction of the room with the vault…

"What's going on in here?" Jinx demanded as she slid into the room and stopped in mid air.

"Um… we… uh.." Mammoth couldn't seem to find the right words.

But he need not say a thing. The trail of blood leaking from underneath a shattered showcase that bore the marks of recent rough handling by Mammoth. And a dark-skinned woman in a turquoise business suit—or her arm anyway—was protruding from the site of impact. Whoever had been underneath that thing was clearly dead.

"Mammoth! You crud-munching idiot!" Gizmo yelled at the team's muscle. "Now we're wanted for murder!"

"Hey! You're the one who said to smash the intruder with the showcase!"

"BECAUSE I THOUGHT IT WAS THAT KLUDGE-EATING TAMARANIAN!" Gizmo fumed. "When you saw that it wasn't a Titan you should have stopped, moron!"

Mammoth ignored the screams and pulled the broken showcase off the corpse he recently brought into existence. And wished he hadn't. She was quite literally a bloody mess, and Gizmo turned and threw up.

All this time Jinx had been staring at the two in horror. "You..!" she stammered.

"Jinx?" Mammoth seemed to be petitioning advice more than expressing concern.

"You guys did this! You're not pinning any of this on me! I wasn't even in this room! Do you understand me?"

With that outbirst, Jinx took off, flying upward and blasting out the sky light, she immediately headed north. She had to get away from the town….

Suddenly, Gizmo, suspended by his jetpack, was flying along side here. "Where the snot do you think you're going?"

"I'm going to find a way to undo what you idiots did. Keep the corpse from rotting. I'm going to go retrieve its ghost somehow and put that woman back together."

"You've completely flipped your kludge-munching mind!" Gizmo screamed. "Since when do you believe in ghosts?"

Jinx glowered at him. "I was POSSESSED by one, REMEMBER?" She was referring to an incident with a former criminal who had called herself Murdercrow. Murdercrow had been betrayed and killed by a man she loved—in the Titans Tower, no less. And said tower had acted as a battery for her ghost's dark power…

And it just so happened that Jinx was being held prisoner when it happened. Raven had eventually exorcized the "demon", but not without cost to Jinx's short term sanity. And now, Jinx was going to hunt ghosts. But this time, they wouldn't control her; SHE would control THEM.

"Oh yeah. Still, Jinx, you need to stop. What happened to the Troika facing everything together?"

Jinx answered by zapping his jetpack with a bad luck beam, and blasting off. In a few moments, Gizmo's jetpack sputtered and failed, and he found himself falling towards the ground… Until he was caught by a huge pair of talons—green talons.

Back at the CBI building, Mammoth finally had managed to drag the bag of diamonds to the roof, along with the frozen body of the woman he'd killed. (Gizmo had done this before taking off after Jinx) Why she had been in the building so late after-hours was anybodies guess. Just then, a sudden noise and several familiar scents caught his attention—the Titans.

"So Mammoth, going somewhere with those rocks?" Robin askd.

Then Starfire saw the body. "Oh, X'hal, no!" she cursed.

Cyborg pointed his Sonic Canon at Mammoth. "You sick…"

The other Titans saw it too. "Team, as if you haven't yet noticed, they've killed someone. Proceed with caution. Titans GO!"

Meanwhile in Amity Park

Danny sighed. Not in exasperation, but out of happiness. It had been quite a while since there had been any significant ghost activity in Amity Park. Well… There had been that recent incident with Technus and the video game Doomed, but otherwise there had been nothing unusual. So it was with great pleasure that Danny enjoyed a weekend of doing nothing but goofing off. (True, it was Thursday, but he had Friday off, which made it technically the weekend already)

So. A long weekend. No evil ghosts to fight. Good weekend, right? Right. Seriously. Danny was enjoying not having to risk his life for a change. He'd had enough of that lately.

A the phone rang. And since Jazz was at her psychology seminar, and his parents were trying to rebuild the helicopter they'd stolen from Vlad into a ghost-fighting machine, they were oblivious to the outside world. So, Danny answered the phone.

"Talk. Danny here."

"Brain, It's me."

"Oh, hey Noel." Danny spoke to his new "buddy". "Don't you have lives to save or something."

"Yeah, about that…"

Danny cut him off. "Hey, Noel. I had Tucker do some research and I heard that you were once admitted to a mental hospital. Is there any truth to that?"

"THAT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS! And don't call me Noel. Use the code name."

"Sorry, Pinky. I was just wondering something. Wouldn't it be weird if you like… never got out. And the whole world was your demented dream? Food for thought."

Danny thought he heard growling at the other end of the line. "The rumors that the world is my dream are still unverified, darn it!"

"So, Pinky, what did you want?"

"I received a report that the sorceress criminal Jinx might be on her way up north. I thought I'd warn you. Her companions said something of her being obsessed with finding the ghost of one of their victims. She may be headed to Amity. Thought I'd warn you."

"Ho-boy. So much for a relaxing long weekend. Thanks for the heads up."

"No problem."

"Bye, Noel!"

"DON'T CALL ME THAT!" he bellowed into the phone. But Danny didn't hear it: he'd already hung up.

END CHAPTER ONE

'Nother Author's Note: Any of you who have been long-time fans of Legend Maker will absolutely love me for that phone call! If you aren't, then go read ALL of her stuff and then you will too. The character here only identified as Noel was indeed created by Ash the Wanderer and used primarily by Legend Maker.